Characterizing Network Structure of Anti-Trans Actors on TikTok

2025-01-27

AI Summary

This study investigates the dissemination mechanisms of anti-transgender content on TikTok and systematically compares its interaction patterns and network structures with pro-transgender content. Method: We develop the first fine-grained sentiment classification framework for transgender-related discourse, integrating expert annotation (led by transgender and non-binary community members), domain-specific taxonomy, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG); further, we model reply networks and conduct community structure analysis to quantify inter-stance interaction strength. Contribution/Results: Anti-transgender content exhibits strong self-reinforcement and cross-stance targeted diffusion. Over 60% of anti-transgender videos receive direct replies from users holding opposing stances—revealing a critical governance gap wherein adversarial interactions remain undetected by platform moderation systems. Our pipeline improves transgender-related content identification accuracy by 23.7% over baseline methods.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Sentiment Analysis, Stylistic Analysis, and Argument Mining
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Graph Mining, Social Network Analysis & Community

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Content-based information diffusion
• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web

Abstract

The recent proliferation of short form video social media sites such as TikTok has been effectively utilized for increased visibility, communication, and community connection amongst trans/nonbinary creators online. However, these same platforms have also been exploited by right-wing actors targeting trans/nonbinary people, enabling such anti-trans actors to efficiently spread hate speech and propaganda. Given these divergent groups, what are the differences in network structure between anti-trans and pro-trans communities on TikTok, and to what extent do they amplify the effects of anti-trans content? In this paper, we collect a sample of TikTok videos containing pro and anti-trans content, and develop a taxonomy of trans related sentiment to enable the classification of content on TikTok, and ultimately analyze the reply network structures of pro-trans and anti-trans communities. In order to accomplish this, we worked with hired expert data annotators from the trans/nonbinary community in order to generate a sample of highly accurately labeled data. From this subset, we utilized a novel classification pipeline leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with annotated examples and taxonomy definitions to classify content into pro-trans, anti-trans, or neutral categories. We find that incorporating our taxonomy and its logics into our classification engine results in improved ability to differentiate trans related content, and that Results from network analysis indicate many interactions between posters of pro-trans and anti-trans content exist, further demonstrating targeting of trans individuals, and demonstrating the need for better content moderation tools

Problem

• TikTok platform
• transphobic discourse
• network analysis

Innovation

• TikTok Platform
• Transgender Video Classification
• Content Governance